17 Amazing Ways a Hobonichi Techo Will Change Your Life

Analog Attorney | The Hobonichi Techo is the gold standard for dated and undated planners, and uses the world’s best paper, and you should get one.
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Hobonichi Techo Planners Are the Global Organizational Sensation You Need

As a verified card-carrying analog weirdo, my relationship with paper is multivalent and perhaps ever so slightly unhealthy. I nerd out over really great sticky notes. I write thank-you cards like it’s 1845. I go through pencils the way other people go through something they go through. Yet, though I gush over Leuchtturm 1917 pads and Baron Fig notebooks, for a long time, my daily planner was a crappy yellow legal pad. No more! From now on, I’m using a Hobonchi Techo Planner, and you should too.

There are a lot of good reasons for me not to do this. I tend to work in weeks, not days. My job is not terrifically demanding. I don’t have a long to-do list. It’s more of a to-do spectrum. Dated pages are not my style. I’m writing this article on a Monday morning and the to-do list I’m working from was laid down in tragically illegible script on my crappy legal pad last Thursday. I’ve only finished one item on that list. An organized planner like the Hobonichi Techo might be a huge waste of paper.

But the Hobonichi Techo Is So Good

Everything about this planner is something that works. It’s like they get me: I love ultra-luxurious practicality. And so, below, please find my deep dive into the Hobonichi Techo planner. I cover every qualitative aspect that makes this planner great.

The Hobonichi Techo is designed to seamlessly integrate into your daily life, helping you manage tasks and activities with ease.

And as the holidays are always just around the corner, these make great gifts.

The Hobonichi Techo Comes in Various Sizes, Purposes and Languages

• The Planner is an A6, 4.1 by 5.8 inches — perfect for a sling bag or a purse.

• The Original is also an A6.

• The Cousin Avec is an A5 planner, slightly bigger at 5.8 by 8.3 inches.

• The Weeks is a slim notebook with dimensions that fall outside standard paper sizes, at 3.75 by 7.4 and only a quarter-inch thick.

• The 5-Year Techo is A5 in size and allows you to log up to five years of entries and memories.

The Paper Is the Gold Standard for Notebooks

Notebook nerds all over the planet go crazy for Tomoe River paper, especially those who use fountain pens. Tomoe River papers are considered world-class because they are luxurious, won’t bleed and don’t feather.

Paper bleed is a nightmare for journal users and fountain pen writers. Ink bleeds right through cheap paper to the other side, running together with what’s already written there, creating a Rorschachian terror that’s impossible to read.

Tomoe River paper is coated on both sides with a substance of elf tears and magic. I would love to tell you what the coating really is, but I can’t find a definitive article, and it doesn’t matter because Tomoegawa Co. had to replace its machines in 2021. This meant the company had to replace the 52gsm paper they’d been making since Woodrow Wilson was in office — the onion-skin thin coated majesty that allowed for perfect inking — with 68gsm paper. Fortunately, current reviews from the freakishly thorough testers have been pretty good.

The quality and thickness of paper make a significant difference — if you’re a paper nerd. If you’re a person who just likes to use your fountain pen on one side of the paper and still read what you wrote on the other side, then this doesn’t matter.

Tomoe River paper is pH neutral, which means it is archival quality, which means your cat doodles will be preserved for their ultimate discovery and subsequent worship by future aliens.

Simple, Elegant and Useful Design and Features

The Hobonichi Techo Has Been Crowdsourced for More Than 20 Years

Hobonichi listens to its people and employs remarkable designers. Every element on every page has been tested in real life by countless users. Each element is highly useful, expertly designed, and so intuitive that you don’t even realize you need it.

Like the Way They Present Years in a Hobonichi Techo

I never really thought about this. A year is a year; it doesn’t really need any special treatment. But I was wrong. Crack open a Hobonichi Techo, and the entire year is displayed across two full pages. Since those pages lie perfectly flat, you have a whole year at a glance with Sundays in red. It seems obvious — like every planner does this. But that’s not entirely true. Leuchtterm 1917 has a three-year overview. Moleskin doesn’t really have one that feels useful. I find the way Hobonichi presents the entire year useful both for circling important dates to see them at a glance and for helping visualize my year.

But They Take It a Step Further With the Monthly Index Pages

This is good for people like me who see time as a wormhole drawn by M.C. Escher. We need this kind of linear layout. For the monthly index, each month sits on a two-line space for notes, then on top of 31 rows, each with the number and first letter of the day. It’s simple but also brilliantly useful.

Hobonichi Techo Planners’ Monthly Calendars Are Also Amazing

Each day of the month is displayed in a box divided by faint dashed lines into 30 small boxes. Simple. Hobonichi Techo planners’ monthly calendars are also amazing. The analog nerd inside of me wants to use those boxes for something. There should be a system, and after the briefest search of the interwebs, I was disappointed that no journal nerd had produced one. Although the sticky notes market is wild, and you might find these moveable, perfectly sized square notes from Midori useful for creating your system. The opportunity is there, which is part of how the simplicity of the Hobonichi Techo works for you. Want to turn a week into some kind of target-based Eisenhower box of productivity? You have 30 ways to do it.

Oh, But Those Daily Pages Are Sweet

Daily pages form the core of the Hobonichi Techo planner. This is where you’ll do most of your work, and Hobonichi has exerted its finest acts of genius. These design choices make the Hobonichi Techo the best choice for a monthly planner.

• The date and week of the year and the moon phase are in the folios. The date is a standard design feature for a daily planner. Without it, the planner is not a daily planner, it’s just a journal. Hobonichi prints bare information, noting the date, day, month and numbered week of the year. Next to this, you get the numerical day of the year (did you know April 15 is the 108th day of the year?) and the phase of the moon for that day. Do you need to know the phase of the moon? Does your firm not hire werewolves #werewolflaw? (Note that for those who prefer a more flexible planning structure, the Day-Free option allows users to create their own daily layouts without being restricted to a specific date setup.)
• The left-hand margin timeline is my baby. Here is where the Japanese language Hobonichi Techo and the English version differ — and maybe not in favor of English. The Japanese Hobonichi divides the day in the left page margin into three-hour intervals. This lets you look at the day in small chunks. The English verso margin is divided at noon. Initially, it seems like you’re looking at the day in two chunks — and it makes you wonder what the designers were thinking. But I like the open format, the way the day isn’t divided so rigidly. I can still ink in my hours however I want, or I can abandon rigidity and dance like no one is looking.
• Do you plan your meals? Because you can plan your meals. It’s not much, but the bottom left side of the daily page has a little knife and fork emblem with no explanation of how to use it. Are you jotting down restaurant reservations? Are you keeping track of calories? Are you watching your carbs? Planning a meal? Shopping for kale? Yes. Yes, you are. They all fit here. And sure, it’s a little kitschy. But you’re probably already thinking about supper all day. It’s the carrot dangling off the workday’s stick. Might as well write it down.
• Schroedinger’s Dotted Grid layout. The 4mm dashed grid, printed in a faint gray, is perfect because it’s there if you need it but kind of fades away if you want to disregard it, much like graph paper. It allows for crazy customization. You can do just about anything with it if you’re a box-and-grid kind of thinker. You can build all kinds of complicated interconnected cubic constructions to organize your day. Or just disregard the grid entirely and organize your day with cartoons (this is common among Hobonichi Techo users).
• Colored monthly tabs are a big help. Tabs are one of the underrated great inventions of stationery science. They’re up there with page points and paper clips on being as ingenious as they are simple. The Hobonichi tabs the edges of each page with a nice black tab numbered for the month it appears in. Sundays are red, which is a helpful visual reminder of where you are in the week. The Japanese version color-codes the tabs for each month, which I prefer. But the minimalist design standards for the English-language Techo skip that extra organizational feature.
• Sundays are red. Every Sunday’s daily page is printed in red instead of light charcoal. This is a simple visual reminder that a new week is starting. If you recognize Sundays as the official day off in your week, then it also indicates that you should kick back with your feet up. However, many of us use Sunday as an unofficial jumpstart on Mondays. The red printing signals it’s time to get cracking.
• Perhaps the Hobnichi Techo Daily Quote can help? On the bottom of the left-hand daily pages, Hobonichi prints an inspirational quote. All of them are from Shigesato Itoi, author and designer of Hobonichi Techo, a copywriter, essayist, lyricist, game designer and actor. Itoi is the editor-in-chief of his website and company, Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun, shortened to Hobonichi, which translates as “Almost Daily Itoi Newspaper.” Itoi posts brief essays, just a thought, called “Today’s Darling,” and you’ll read these thoughts in your Hobinichi.
• Those mini-calendars hide amazing design tricks. Across from the daily quote, on the right-hand pages, you’ll find a mini calendar. Not exactly a stretch to include a mini calendar in a planner. But in that mini calendar, the days of the two pages spread out before you are circled. This is one of those discreet design features that underscore the overall generosity of the Techo planner. It’s a visual reminder of where you are. I think it’s a huge assist in keeping you in the flow of the linear timeline.

There Is a Lot of Free Space on the Hobonichi Techo Pages

Around the daily pages and throughout the planner, space to write is generous and constant. As a doodler, I’m very happy with the free space because I will fill it with cartoons, stupid numbers, bad math and strange geometry. You may find that space helpful in developing your own indicia or legends to modify and codify your own special brand of daily planning.

There Is a ‘Coming Up!’ Page at the Start of Each Month

This feature bears a kind of hopeless optimism that normally makes me want to throw things. But I think the exclamation mark here is motivating, not cringy. And yes, I know, that is a decidedly minor feature to get curmudgeonly about, but I invite you, dear reader, to ask yourself, rhetorically: Have we met? Even the tiniest dot in the Hobonichi Techo monthly planner is worth long, fruitful rumination, eyes furrowed in a quiet stoicism as you think hard about whether or not this single instance of an exclamation mark is worthy of your furious indignation.

Informational Pages Are Informational

Every planner has a version of these pages, the fasteners that even up the page count and offer the most general usefulness. Yet, people like me find them the hidden gems of most planners. The Hobonichi informational pages are the most wackadoodle yet. I don’t hate these insertions, but I don’t find them entirely useful in a post-analog world. And I don’t find them useful in a post-post-analog world like, for instance, mine. If I sound like I’m making fun of them, please disregard the snark.

Sure, there are the 17-dot grid blank sheets jammed in there after December. What are they for? How do you use them? Does it matter? The word JOT is often employed here as a general indication of what you’re supposed to do with them. But a planner needs some blank sheets, and these are perfect in their dottiness, allowing for grid work, organization or insane doodling.

And, of course, some contact pages. As if your phone doesn’t work. I mean, here is an artifact of analog’s digital disdain I can’t get behind. My phone is the very best place to keep phone numbers and contact info because if I’m going to contact someone, I’m going to do it using my phone, even if I’m looking up their address to send them a card. However, there may be value in having contact pages in the back of the Hobonichi Techo. I just don’t know what that is.

And conversion tables because Siri gets a day off, right? I don’t even use a search to convert weights and measures. I just yell, and Siri tells me that 11 teaspoons are almost four tablespoons so I can get back to my important research in cookie-ology. I wouldn’t look at a conversation table if you paid me. We need new throwaway pages! Why not a list of the most Etruscan verb modifiers?

Naturally, your personal information. A legacy holdover, but perhaps a more useful one. If you drop your Hobonichi Techo at the zoo and some helpful patron finds it, they can mail it back to you. Or throw it to the monkeys.

I mean, why did you bring your monthly calendar to the zoo anyway? If you’re a paranoid person, you won’t fill in these pages anyway. But if Reddit has taught me anything, it’s the value of an act of altruism for growing your fan base. So, add your data and when you lose your wallet, just wait. Some streamer will bring it to you to film the whole thing for likes.

Finally, a planner that converts international clothing sizes! I can’t tell you how often I’ve bought a shirt on the internet only to find out that 2X in Korean sizes will barely fit onto my arm, much less my torso. Thank heavens the Hobonichi Techo has a hand chart of clothing sizes because I don’t know why.

Finally, I can learn about Donburi Rice bowls, which are a very common meal in Japan. It’s pretty much anything on rice. Every dish’s name just means “this thing+rice.” These pages filled with rice dish lore are in every version of the Hobonichi. I feel like it would be as if the Franklin Planner people added a whole chapter on the various hot-dog styles of America — OK, now I get it.

But Here’s the Information Page I Really Love

I’m a list maniac, and Hobonichi gets me. They have a two-page spread divided into 100 cells for you to track, list or order 100 of something. This is where I add my rolling bucket list, which is still in process.

I mean, I’ve finally got my “five” figured out (Helen Mirren, Terri Garr, Sean Young, any of the goldfish from Fantasia, Peter Dinklage), and now I have to come up with 100 things I want to do before I croak? Well, at least I have a handy place to keep them now.

What’s in your 100?

The Craftsmanship Is as Good as the Design

The Tomoe River paper is just the foundation for great craftsmanship in the Hobonichi planners. They are stitched together to lie flat when open. This matters a lot to planner people. As the planner is used, it lies flatter and flatter, no matter where you open it. A planner should lie flat even if you aren’t using it. If you lay your Hobonichi open on your desk, it will stay that way as if it’s a ring-bound At-A-Glance planner. OK, maybe not in the first week, but it doesn’t take long for the thing to adapt.

Hobonchi Techo’s Rounded Corners are Top-Shelf Details

Round corners are not only pretty they are also practical. I work with my trusty legal pad right next to my laptop, and I can’t tell you how much I hate its square corners. I catch them every time I move my hand, so after a couple of hours, the bottom-left corner of the top page is curled up and in my way and &%$#@! I’m so mad. That doesn’t happen when I’m using the Baron Fig and it sure as hell won’t happen when I’m six months into a Hobonichi Techo.

Small detail? Yes. Vital to my personal happiness? Like the air I breathe.

Each Hobonichi Techo Planner Is Numbered

Your planner arrives stamped with a serial number on the last page. You can’t do much with it, but there is a weird satisfaction in knowing your planner is the only one with that particular number emblazoned in back.

Here’s Where to Get Your Hobonichi Techo

You can browse the Hobonichi Techo lineup here on the official site, which includes Japanese and English options. The original book set, which is A6 size, costs $37 to $45 or thereabouts on the Hobonichi website from Japan. The U.S. price for a Hobonichi A5 Cousin in English is around $55 to $69.

The Hobonichi Techo comes in various sizes such as A6 and A5, including the A6 Original and A5 Cousin Avec planners. The Techo A6 is compact and portable, while the A5 offers more space for writing.

Options like the weekly horizontal and weekly mega layouts with extra memo pages provide flexibility for different planning needs. You can also buy a set, which includes the book, a cover and various inserts.

The Techo is meant to be used with a cover, which is not always included when you buy a book from U.S. sites. The Hobonichi Techo marketplace offers dozens of creative options, ranging from $20 to $300, depending on the artist and the quality of the materials.

Amazon has a Hobonichi store with lots of accessories but doesn’t always have the current edition in stock. The black Hobonichi Techo 2025 A6 Planner above is available along with many covers.

JetPens.com and Milligram also offer a large selection of Hobonichi products. JetPens also offers a variety of accessory bundles with compatible pens and pencils, stamps, rulers, darts and sticky notes.

Fair warning: Hobonichi planners have highly anticipated release dates, which begin in September.

Originally published in August 2021; latest update, November 2024.

Image © iStockPhoto.com.

Note: The author did not receive affiliate fees for this article (though he should have).